Modern electric or electronic devices include many components that generate heat, including, but not limited to processors/controllers, signal processing devices, memory devices, communication/transceiver devices, power generation devices, and the like. Adequate thermal management of these components is critical to the successful operation of these systems and devices. When components generate a large amount of heat, the heat must be dissipated or transported quickly away from the heat source in order to prevent failure of the heat producing components.
In the past, thermal management of electronic components has included air-cooling systems and liquid-cooling systems. Regardless of the type of fluid used (e.g., air or liquid), it may be challenging to deliver the fluid to the heat source, e.g., the component generating large amounts of heat. For example, electronic devices, such as mobile devices or wearables, may include processors and/or integrated circuits within enclosures that make it difficult for a cooling fluid to reach the heat generating components.
To transfer the heat away from these difficult to access components, conventional solutions use plates made from highly thermally-conductive material, such as graphite or metal, that have been placed in thermal contact with the heat generating components such that the heat is carried away via conduction through the plate. However, the speed and efficiency of the heat transport in a solid plate is limited by the thermal resistance of the material.
Conventional solutions also use wicked heat pipes to transfer heat from a heated region (also referred to as an evaporator region) to a cooled region (also referred to as a condenser region). A traditional wicked heat pipe consists of a tube with a wick running along the interior surface of the tube. The tube is filled with a liquid that evaporates into a vapor at the evaporator region, which then flows toward the condenser region. The vapor condenses back into a liquid at the condenser region. The wick enables the condensed liquid to flow back to the evaporator region for the cycle to repeat.
However, there are many challenges with wicked or grooved structures in integrated vapor chambers or liquid cooled heat pipes on standard Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs), for example. A few of these disadvantages with conventional wicked or grooved structures are summarized below:                Micro-grooved structures showed poor performance in gravity operations;        Lack of fluid crossover ability causes circulation challenges;        The wicks cause a thermal resistance inside the pipe itself;        Insertion of a wick structure (regardless of porosity and design) is a challenge and not a common practice for PCB manufacturers;        Insertable wick requires an additional copper restraint to hold it in place to allow for a cavity for vapor;        The inside of vapor chambers and heat pipes is usually coated in sintered metal, which creates problems. The basic problem is that the inside of both the vapor chamber and the heat pipe have very little surface area.        